How To Stay Positive When It's A Negative Environment At Work

Joey
Faucette an author, speaker and coach and a
contributor at Entrepreneur.

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Staying positive in a negative environment can change not just
your business, but your entire life.

Rather than wallowing when a problem strikes, believe your
business reality can be redefined. Old problems become
entrepreneurial challenges as you perceive new solutions. Then,
when you achieve a goal, recognize the benefits of your positive
work lifestyle. Say, "Thank you!" and give away all the
positivity you can as you lead your company by serving others.
And amazingly, the cycle of working positive begins anew and
you'll find yourself receiving even more in your business.

Give your mind a positive work-out. Think of your mind as a
muscle that needs consistent strengthening. A flabby, unfit mind
simply chases whatever thought about your business that enters
it--or, whatever thought someone else suggests about it, positive
or negative. Your mind freezes up; that is, mental scar tissue
develops and you become susceptible to whatever thought shows up.
Mental surgery then becomes necessary to remove the scar tissue
of those negative thoughts that moved you to behave in your
business in an unhealthy manner.

Why are you so susceptible? Here's how your mind works. Consider
how snack commercials on TV affect you. You weren't hungry
before, but suddenly you're getting up and heading to the kitchen
for snack food. The power of suggestion is so strong. Your mind
received the impression, activated a hunger impulse, and
triggered your legs to move. You really didn't even think about
it. It just happened.

But what if you focus your thoughts? What if you have made a
conscious decision to cut out snacks between meals? Your mind is
made up--your priority of losing weight takes precedence over the
commercial's suggestion.

But maybe you're thinking, "It's not that easy to focus my
thoughts, especially when it comes to my company."

Actually it is. Your mind was made to focus. Your mind focuses on
something every minute of every day. The question is not if you
focus your mind, but on what?

There is no denying that the world contains negative mental
energy. You can't just deny the existence of negativity and
expect positivity to show up. But you can decide how to focus
your own energies.

Think about your choice to perceive this way. Vultures fly over
the desert, looking for dead animals. Hummingbirds fly over the
same desert, looking for flowers growing from a cactus or near a
pond. Vultures and hummingbirds fly over the same desert, but one
bird looks for death and the other looks for life.

As it is with the vulture and hummingbird, so it is with you and
me. As we fly over the business landscape that surrounds us,
we're looking for something. We choose what we're looking
for--death or life, failures or successes, losses or leverage;
the negative or the positive. Then we live our choices.

You can choose to think about your business's best qualities, not
the worst; things to praise your employees about, not things to
curse them for; the beautiful way in which your customers buy
your products and use your services, not the ugly few who demand
a refund.

For example, it is so easy for us to fill our minds with what we
can't do. That's a never-ending list for me.

Right now, I could say to myself, "There's always something I
can't do. Now that I think about it, there's no reason in the
world I should ever think that anyone anywhere on this planet
would want to read a book about working positively. I don't know
why I wrote it. I wasted all this time, energy and money on a
book that was supposed to bring me speaking engagements and
coaching opportunities so I can transform business people's
negative lives into work positive lifestyles."

See what I mean? Of course it's not just you and me who choose to
focus on that "can't do" list. We all do at times. Since your
mind focuses on something, anything, it will go to that
never-ending list, especially in times of frustration or
perceived failure.

It's so much more empowering to focus your mind on what you can
do. No, you might not be able to do correctly what you're
attempting on the first try. However, finding something you can
do related to the task and focusing on that accomplishment
creates a positive perception in your mind. That positive
perception then becomes the jet fuel that releases your
imagination to work on the rest of the task that presents such a
challenge. With that high-octane fuel, your imagination soars to
new heights of accomplishment in your business.

By exercising the positive muscle group of your mind and focusing
on profit-enriching activities, pretty soon that which seemed
impossible about your business becomes not only doable, but you
say to yourself, "I can see my business this way all the time!"